2013 Fire Season with the Jackson Hotshots

I know that I haven't posted in months (years?).  I hope to revive this blawg to journal the upcoming 2013 fire season.  This will be my second season as a wildland firefighter.  I must give credit to Brad Wright and the Pulaski wildland fire crew for making my first season such a brilliant learning experience.  Due to the professionalism and high activity of the crew, I learned that working in wildland fire was not a passing fad, but something I looked forward to and had become passionate about.

Last season I had applied to over 130 jobs hoping to work in fire.  I received zero replies, along with the information that many of the positions that I had applied to had never even received my resume, contrary to what the hiring system had told me through automatic emails.  Unable to secure a position on an active crew, I resigned my self to the administrative decision list.  The work was not as steady, but I was able to get on some good fires, including a couple in Idaho.

This season, I decided to target hotshot crews specifically.  I was enamored with the idea of working fire to fire, spending most of the season on the road around the US.  I was fortunate enough to meet a shot crew on the Trinity Ridge Fire, outside of Mountain Home, Idaho.  One of their rookies was an alumni of the Americore, who's crewboss and trainer, Steve Hubner, was our acting crewboss.  Steve ran a wildland firefighter program out of the Dismal Swamps of Virginia, and was able to persuade a few of the members to come speak about working on a Hotshot crew.

The main thing that struck me about this crew was how approachable they were.  Over the season, I had experienced a gap between Type II handcrews and the more prestigious Hotshot crews.  Jackson Hotshots were more than willing to share their experiences and expectations of working on their crew.  With how much I had enjoyed my first season, I knew this was the type and level of crew that I wanted to work with.  In addition, I had high aspirations of working as a sawyer.

The application process seemed to take forever.  The application website had been changed, and I still had little faith in it due to the technical problems I encountered last year.  Early spring was when I first got the call back from Jackson.  I was informed that I was to be brought on as a sawyer (YES!) and that they had no idea when the season would start, due to the ensuing sequester.  I was told to expect a lot of physical training and to train to failure to prepare for a hard season.  The hardest part of the application was the wait.  There was an extremely long period of hearing nothing.  The start date kept getting pushed back, and the government cutbacks were constantly a topic on the news.  I started to worry that this season may not happen.  IDs were applied for and physicals were taken, but the process still seemed to be going nowhere.  Early April, the word finally came.  May 20th would be the start date.  I would be a Hotshot for the BLM this season.